The Valley of Unknowing (30 page)

‘A plane where?’

‘The choice is yours. Hamburg maybe, or Munich.’

Munich: home of Bernheim Media, powerhouse of the global Aden phenomenon. I could pay them a visit. No doubt they would extend me a warm welcome. But how warm would it remain, once they had learned the truth? How understanding would they be when I told them they’d spent a fortune on a book they didn’t own, promoting an author who didn’t exist?

‘Then what?’

‘That’s up to you.’ Claudia looked at me. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? To do what you want?’

I’d been doing what I wanted for years; right up to the moment Theresa came along. Under her influence it had turned into what I
didn’t
want.

‘She’ll be at home by then,’ I said. ‘In Austria.’

‘Who?’

‘Theresa. I want to warn her. I want her to know I’m on my way out.’

Claudia shook her head. ‘Tell her when you get there.’

‘I don’t know a soul in the West. Only her.’ I reached into my coat. ‘I’ve already written something, here. There must be a way to get it to her. Please.’

We were almost at the main road. Two hundred yards away, at the tram stop, a small line of people were waiting. Claudia sighed and took the envelope from my hand. ‘All right. I’ll do what I can.’

We stopped at the corner, beside an empty lot. A handful of old Trabants were parked on the uneven ground. Nothing moved on the wide, rain-washed street.

Claudia tucked the letter into her bag. ‘Tell me something: why now?’

‘Is this for your report?’

She laughed. ‘I don’t make reports.’

‘For the record, then?’

‘I don’t keep records. I’m just curious.’

‘It’s complicated. It has to do with a book.’

‘Theresa’s book?’

‘Not exactly.’ I realised I was still carrying
The Orphans of Neustadt
in my hand. ‘What I meant to say was two books.’

Claudia shook her head. ‘Damned writers.’

A tram was coming down the hill, dull sparks flickering in its belly. Our meeting was at an end.

‘So,’ she said, hunching her shoulders. ‘Any questions?’

‘Yes. The same as yours.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why now? Why have you decided to trust me now?’

Claudia had already set off across the street. She looked back over her shoulder. ‘What makes you think I trust you?’ she said.

52

The preparation for my journey, for the final abandonment of my home, for the grave crime of
Republikflucht
(to give it its forensic name) was no preparation at all. As Claudia had reminded me, there could be no packing, no gathering of mementos, no farewells, tearful or otherwise. I was to carry on as normal until the moment I reached Berlin, whereupon I was to cease being Bruno Krug, People’s Champion of Art and Culture, and become Werner Kleinschmidt, a sales executive at a medical supplies company near Frankfurt. This new persona was to endure for no more than a few hours. It represented a transitional phase, a chrysalis, masking my transformation from earthbound socialist caterpillar to airworthy Western butterfly. Once over the inner German border, I was to become Bruno Krug again, but beyond my name, the exact nature of that renewed identity – fighter for freedom, hypocrite, refugee, traitor – was very far from clear.

Contrary to expectations, maintaining the appearance of normality was not easy. The clinic in Loschwitz telephoned to enquire after my stool sample, which was by now long overdue (their pills had no noticeable effect). I could not afford to arouse suspicion, so I duly set about trying to provide and bottle the requested material, an operation greatly complicated by my permanent state of anxiety, which ensured that any food I did eat – and I ate very little – went through me at alarming speed. If anything, I overdid the charade of business-as-usual. At a meeting of the regional Writers’ Union I made a long and boring speech about self-criticism in the workplace and the need for socialist writers to foster it, my first such intervention at that forum since the era of détente. I hung Christmas decorations and a string of coloured lights in my apartment. I committed to a plethora of plumbing jobs, enough to keep me occupied until well into the New Year. I even went as far as to get tickets to
Taras Bulba
for the following season, which entailed pulling strings with Barbara Jaeger (‘Russian opera, Bruno? What next, Russian women?’). By my standards this level of activity was frenetic and would have suggested to any conscientious observer a transition of some kind.

I had other tasks, besides play-acting at normal life. The first was to assemble an outfit of suitable Western clothes. I owned a number of items already – most usefully the raincoat I originally gave Michael Schilling and had not yet returned – but no shoes and no tie. The latter I found at the Intershop, a gaudy floral affair in Italian silk, but the range of footwear on offer was small and almost exclusively for women. I had to settle on an ancient pair of black leather lace-ups, which I recovered from the back of the wardrobe and polished for hours on end, hoping the resultant oily shine would convey an adequate sense of prosperity and bourgeois materialism. I had also to learn my part. Anton’s instructions contained a detailed biography of Werner Kleinschmidt, which I was to memorise: information about his family, friends and employment, addresses and phone numbers, and his purpose in East Berlin, which was to visit grieving relatives in Prenzlauer Berg (it seemed Kleinschmidt had missed the funeral). This was to be the basis of a more detailed persona, which my instructions said I should develop for myself, just in case I was questioned. This part of my task held none of the pleasures that normally accompany the development of a fictional character. I was aware at all times of how brittle my creation was and how easily exposed for a cipher – the price for my lack of prowess being potentially greater than any number of bad reviews. With this in mind I finally destroyed the slender file I had stolen from the clinic in Radeburg, tearing it into little pieces and dumping it into the communal skip, concealed inside an old detergent bottle. It was, I reasoned, hardly proof of anything in itself – certainly not an unlawful killing – and if it were found on me, disaster was all but certain to follow.

Theresa’s silence added to the torment of those nine days. I had no idea how long my letter would take to reach her. It was unreasonable to expect a reply in so short a time. But she had promised to write to me as soon as she was safely in the West and so far I had heard nothing. It was possible the post was responsible. Correspondence did not always make it across the inner German border. It was a busy time of year. But there were other possibilities I found difficult to exclude: that my letter had silenced her, the momentous news that I would soon be in the West myself, intent on killing off Eva Aden for good. Maybe Theresa didn’t like the idea of that. As Eva Aden, she had told me she felt free. Free, famous and potentially well off. It was a lot to give up.

The day before I was due to leave I went in search of Claudia Witt. My head was full of questions that only she could answer – questions about the border, questions about Theresa – and she would surely know by that time that I posed no threat. But what I really wanted was reassurance. I wanted to hear that my method of escape was tried and tested. I wanted her to tell me that nothing could go wrong, so long as I kept my head. Above all, I wanted her to tell me that Theresa would be waiting for me on the other side – because all this, everything I was doing, everything I was leaving behind, it all meant nothing if she wasn’t there to witness it.

Having no home address for her, I returned to the cellar bar near the medical school in the hope she would show up there. Four hours went by without any sign of her. I was on the point of giving up when a florid young man came down the steps, polishing his spectacles with a handkerchief. I recognised him as one of Claudia’s birthday companions: Johann or Johannes or Jürgen. He seemed pleased to see me and readily accepted the offer of a drink. In the ensuing conversation it emerged that Claudia had gone to Berlin for an audition six days earlier and not come back. No one had heard from her since then.

The young man made light of the news, but I could tell that behind his breezy delivery he was concerned.

‘That quintet she’s in, they were supposed to have a rehearsal today, but she didn’t show.’

‘I expect she stayed for some sightseeing. She’ll be back.’

He nodded. ‘I expect so. She certainly isn’t the type just to take off without saying goodbye.’

53

Claudia Witt was a prisoner of the state security apparatus, undergoing interrogation at the prison in Hohenschönhausen. She was enjoying a stay with friends in East Berlin, having decided to extend her visit for a few days. She had crossed the inner German border using a forged passport, just like the one she had given me, and was now safe in the West. As I hurried home, sweat turning cold on my skin, these were the notions that jostled for traction in my sleep-deprived brain: Claudia at the Christmas market, cheeks aglow; Claudia split-lipped, eyelids purple and swollen like ripe plums; Claudia reunited with Theresa, drinking champagne and toasting freedom – which vision was the true one? Which was the most natural, the most unforced? Which one would you believe, if you read it in a book? I couldn’t tell. Two possibilities gave me no reason to call off my departure; the other gave me
every
reason. But the ratio was two to one. In the absence of aesthetic or intuitive guidance, I fell back on the laws of probability. By Claudian criteria, my escape route was twice as likely to be secure as not. Were they such very bad odds? Wolfgang Richter wouldn’t have thought so. He would have taken them every time.

If there had been time for second thoughts, perhaps I would have had them. But there was no time. My train for the capital left at eight the next morning. I managed at most two hours of wretched, fitful dreaming, and rose at half past five. I had been afraid of feeling drowsy, but on waking I found myself strangely alert, as one emerging from an ice-cold swim. I heard everything, saw everything with stark clarity, as if it were being carved into my memory with shards of glass. Methodically I dressed, shaved and gathered my things, knowing as I left each room in turn that I would never see it, or its contents, again. It struck me as an unnatural departure – a disrespectful one, to the past, to my life’s history – to be so final and yet so casual at the same time. It was a struggle to leave the bed unmade, more than I could manage to leave dirty dishes in the sink.

At seven, I turned off the lights one by one, locked the door of the apartment and went downstairs, carrying a shopping bag, in which I had placed Schilling’s English raincoat, my Italian tie, my best black velvet jacket and a bottle of expensive cologne. It was with these that I planned to manifest my brief insertion into the ranks of Western middle management. By the front door I found one of my elderly neighbours wiping the seat of his bicycle. He must have been surprised at seeing me up so early. It took a small effort of will to say good morning, because what I wanted to say to him, he who at that moment embodied everything I was forsaking, was goodbye.

The tram came at once. I arrived at the central railway station by the first light of dawn. It was then, as I paced the empty platform, that I became aware of having neglected something. I had not been allowed to say goodbye to anyone. My departure had to appear casual, my absence temporary. But there was one goodbye I could say without risk of betrayal, one goodbye I
had
to say. I checked my watch. The train wasn’t due to leave for more than half an hour. I hurried out of the station and through the streets, my pace picking up as the minutes ticked by. In the end I was running, the shopping bag clutched to my chest, my shiny shoes slipping on the cobblestones.

The heaps of masonry looked the same as always. In the grey-blue light they were stubbornly untransformed; the grass a little browner, the brambles on the southern side a little deader. But what a pull they had, those blackened stones, what
gravity
. The sight of them – I am ashamed to admit this – brought a sob to my throat and for a moment I was a boy again (Thomas in my book, Alex in Richter’s), chest heaving, all at once alone in a place of strangers. There was a difference, though, and it came to me as I traced the site perimeter in my usual way: this time, for the first time, I had somewhere else to go.

I made it to the train with a minute to spare. Most of the seats were taken, and I was obliged to insert myself between an obese woman who smelled of bacon and the enormous trunk she had parked in the gangway. I wanted to take one last look at the city skyline as it slid away into the distance, but I was afraid the obese woman would think I was staring at her. So I took out a copy of
The Orphans of Neustadt
– first edition, first impression, the first copy I ever laid eyes on, now obscured behind a plain brown paper cover – and pretended to read it. The one time I did look up, I saw only derelict warehouses sliding by. ‘
Fine cookware
’ announced an old pre-war advertisement, still faintly visible on the brickwork: ‘
Repairs carried out professionally
’ boasted another. The one I remember most clearly read ‘
Coffins at all prices
’.

If anyone followed me on to the train I did not see them.

*

In Berlin, the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall ran along the banks of the River Spree not two hundred yards from the Hauptbahnhof. For this reason I did not take the shortest route to my first destination, but instead went north for a few hundred yards towards the Karl Marx Allee, before once again heading west towards the city centre. According to Anton’s instructions I was to arrive outside the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint between half past four and a quarter to five. With some hours to go, I had decided to approach my point of exit by degrees, my first stop being the Pergamon Museum, home to the Pergamon Altar and a range of archaeological treasures too large for the victorious Russians to loot. It was there that Wolfgang Richter had first set eyes on Theresa, but it was not out of any desire to visualise the encounter (an encounter that led Wolfgang back to the valley and to his death) that I was going there.

I bought a guide pamphlet and wandered around the exhibits – the altar, the Ishtar Gate, the Aleppo Room, the exhibition of Old Berlin – accompanied by a steady stream of tourists, some of whom appeared to be Western, judging from their superior photographic equipment and superior teeth. I was accosted by a young Asian couple wearing jeans and ski jackets that appeared to be cut from a duvet. They asked me to take a picture of them hugging each other beside a martial Greek frieze, which I did with trepidation, being unsure whether or not photography was permitted. The sights duly seen, I then wandered into the men’s lavatories, found a spare cubicle and locked myself in. From a previous visit, years earlier, I remembered that the sanitary facilities at the Pergamon were unusually private and secure. I was relieved to discover that nothing had changed.

A few minutes later I emerged in the cologne-soaked guise of Werner Kleinschmidt, my old coat, along with the shopping bag, now hidden on top of the cistern. Finding myself alone, I risked a hasty check in the mirror. The raincoat looked expensive, but needlessly dressy; the tie expensive but effeminate. It crossed my mind that I might be taken for a homosexual. I was about to remove the tie when it occurred to me that this might be a good thing. In state-sponsored critiques, the decadence of the Western lifestyle had often been illustrated with reference (oblique or otherwise) to homosexuality and the feminisation of manhood. To a well-indoctrinated border guard a Western male was quite likely to have homosexual leanings. If I appeared homosexual, therefore, I was more likely to be perceived as a Westerner.

At four o’clock, by which time it was getting dark, I left. I crossed over the canal and walked a few hundred metres along a dark, narrow road, following the brick arches of the Stadtbahn towards the west until I came out beside the mainline station on Friedrichstrasse. It was a busy thoroughfare, cars and taxis queuing as they passed beneath the railway bridge, streams of East Berliners heading for the S-Bahn, silhouetted against brightly lit shopfronts. I went into a store, paid over the odds for three bottles of Russian vodka and continued on my way, carrying the bottles in a reinforced paper bag. As I advanced towards the checkpoint I felt my confidence slowly ebbing away. Were the
Grenztruppen
supposed to be deceived by an Aquascutum raincoat and a floral tie? I tried to pick out returning Westerners in the crowd, men in particular. How did they walk? Did they look around? What did they do with their hands? I needed to observe their manner, their style. But it was hard in the deepening gloom to tell the transient Westerners from the Actually Existing Socialists.

On the north side of the railway, beside the river, stood a modern building with three glass walls and a sloping concrete roof. The authorities called it a border control pavilion; ordinary Berliners, who had always tended towards theatricality where their own city was concerned, called it the
Tränenpalast
(Palace of Tears). It was there that people heading into the West queued to have their documents checked; there that they said goodbye to friends and relatives who could not follow. According to Anton’s briefing, my passport would be inspected three times, the third inspection being the most thorough. The queue outside was fat and long. It snaked for a hundred metres through the sparse landscaping of the square. Christmas was coming: the season for delivering gifts from the West, the season for picking up Cuban cigars and liquor from the East. It made sense for me to cross now. There had to be greater safety in numbers, pressure on verification procedures. In a cross-border rush hour my odds were better: but better than what? On that point Anton had offered no guidance.

After a few minutes of negligible progress I noticed that the queue was getting longer. If half past four was busy, half past five would have been busier. But my instructions had been specific as to the time of my arrival: it was to be no later than a quarter to five. What happened, I wondered, after that? Did a particular guard go off duty, a guard who had to be
on
duty? Claudia had told me:
make sure you stand in the right line
. These thoughts provoked a new anxiety: that Anton had failed to anticipate the length of the queue. Was I going to reach the third passport check too late? Was I about to present my forged documents to the wrong guard?

These conjectures, I learned later, were wide of the mark. In the queue, about forty-five minutes behind me, stood the real Werner Kleinschmidt, medical supplies executive from Frankfurt, who had just returned from one of his regular meetings at the Ministry of Health. When contacted by a conscientious Dutch reporter years after the event, Herr Kleinschmidt said he was unaware of having played any role in my flight, but that his passport had gone missing from his office a few months beforehand, obliging him to apply for a new one. He also reported that, upon reaching the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint forty-five minutes after I did, he was taken in for questioning and held for several hours, which had never happened before.

Time shuffled by, one nervous step at a time. At five o’clock I stood on the threshold of the
Tränenpalast
. At a guard post they were checking passports. Farewells were taking place outside: hugs, handshakes, audible sobbing. Many of the people in the queue had only been there to say goodbye, prolonging contact with their loved ones for as long as possible, squeezing every last second out of the precious day. Up ahead I saw grown men with tears in their eyes, though they tried their best to hide them, hastily reaching into their pockets for handkerchiefs and scraps of tissue. I envied the simplicity of their predicament, the purity and force of their feelings. It was something I wished I still knew.

I had entertained vague hopes that Theresa might come to meet me outside the
Tränenpalast
. Two Westerners crossing together, I thought, might have been less conspicuous than one Westerner crossing alone. On the other hand Herr Kleinschmidt was a married man with two children. A young female companion might have complicated the story. But that didn’t mean Theresa couldn’t be at the station. Several of the lines and half the platforms were for Western passengers only, being securely fenced off from the rest. At that very moment she might be waiting a few yards away on the westbound S-Bahn platform. The more I thought about it, the more likely this seemed. Why
wouldn’t
Theresa come to meet me, now that I had proven my love by giving up everything to be with her? The border had divided us. The border had held us back, posing questions about the future that we weren’t yet ready to answer. If there had been equivocation and concealment, this was the reason. Without a border between us, everything would be out in the open. Everything would be different.

Even as I reassured myself with these candied visions of the life to come, I was uncomfortably aware of following in the footsteps of young Thomas Schwitzer, the protagonist of
The Orphans of Neustadt
. My ideological direction of travel was the reverse of his, but in other respects the parallels were striking. Thomas too gave up a comfortable, narrow, morally agnostic existence for the dream of a better world – and did it for love (or, as some feminist critics would have it, for lust). At the end of the story his happiness, like his devotion to the cause, is hanging by a heartstring. So it was with me. Over the years, many commentators have asked if Sonja, the object of Schwitzer’s desire, is naive in thinking the young leopard has really changed his spots, that the black marketeer will go on loving her once the going gets tough. The question few have ever thought to ask is whether
she
will go on loving
him
.

The first inspection was cursory: no questions, no searches. The queue divided before descending a flight of steps. The interior of the building was brightly lit. Cameras looked down from fixed points on every side. A chemical taint cut through the ambient fug of sweat and damp footwear. Ahead were the customs checks, officials in short jackets lined up behind tables. I could spot the Westerners now: they had a preference for natural fibres and the men had layered haircuts that gave them an appearance of vigour. I needed to look like them, to pass unnoticed beneath the lens. A man my age in a smart green overcoat was reading a paperback book, frowning between audible yawns. I took out my book and copied him in a pantomime of distaste. What a dull and dated fiction was
The Orphans of Neustadt
(modern classic or not), how overrated was its author. Wolfgang Richter would have enjoyed the spectacle, the involuntary self-criticism. It would have appealed to his satirical sense of humour.